“Not everybody wants treasure.” Tom says it low, but it stops Jim dead; we all look at Tom. “Huck don’t care ’bout treasure,” says he. “Not really. Don’t care ’bout it, don’t have no use for it. Wouldn’t know what to do with it if he found it, would you Hucky? Huck ain’t like the rest of us – he don’t feel no need to have truck. Whatever he’s got, he’s happy with that. That’s how he’s always been. And I reckon I know him better’n anyone here.” And he casts his eye up at Pap, kind of reproachful – though Pap’s ready too gleeful to feel reproached.
“Well, all right, then, let Huck ask it,” says he. Jim stoops forward, so the hairball hangs toward me. “Best hand the whole thing over, boy,” says Pap. “Don’t want to go asking it things yourself when you don’t mean to, like you did before (though I ain’t blaming you, just saying).”
“I guess,” murmurs Jim, slowly, rightly careful of anything that crawls out of Pap’s mouth. He sucks his teeth then lifts that charm from round his neck and hands it to me. Pap probly was fixing to make off with it later, though – bad luck or not, he’d find a way to scratch a dollar with it, I reckon.
I hang the hairball round my own neck and take a-holt of it.
“Hallo, spirit,” says I. “It’s Huck here, Huckleberry Finn. Got a question for you: where’s Injun Joe’s loot? We ’ready know it’s in these here caves – now you tell us how to find it!”
“Proceed down the tunnel to the west, about three-quarters of a mile,” comes the spirit’s voice. “I shall speak again once you get there.”
“Dern!” says Pap, ’most smacking his leg with the shovel. “Grab that pick, boy, and let’s git!”
“Lord!” says Jim. “Three-quarter of a mile? Jus’ how big is this cave?”
“See what I mean,” says Pap. “Now what if you’d been holding it then?”
“Big enough for these to burn down, if we ain’t quick,” says Tom, taking one of the candles from Jim so he can heft the pickaxe.
Just then a sound floats into the cave on the morning breeze. It’s a dog barking. A big one, far off, but coming closer.
“What is…?” A big black hand comes down and slaps my hand clear of the hairball ’fore I can finish speaking.
“Don’t ask things you care ’bout,” says Jim. “That’s a bloodhoun’! Ev’ry runaway knows the soun’ o’ that! Reckon that’s a posse on my trail!”
“They might just be searching for survivors,” says Tom, kind of hopeful.
“Or maybe…,” says Pap, “…maybe it ain’t a posse at all. Maybe it’s Injun Joe agin – turned hisself into a hound to sniff us out!”
We all look at each other, then run down that tunnel quick.
It went up high, roof of that tunnel. ’Spect it was up there, but it was farther’n the glow from the candles could reach. It warn’t a good place to run, the floor all uneven, and slippery from the water, and the candle flames shaking all over the place and Tom and Pap having to shield the glow to keep the draft from blowing them out as they ran, and all of us bumping into each other and ’most falling over. And ev’ry so often there’d be splits in the side walls, just plain black, wide ’nuff to clamber through if you was set on it and mad. Ev’ry time I saw one of those my heart skipped, ’specting something to come jumping out. There was black marks scrawled all over them walls, done by visitors writing their names with candle smoke; a regular crowd of them at first, but farther we went, fewer there was. Least those folks had left some of their candles behind ’em – we’d spot an inch or two of tallow lying on the floor now and then and one or t’other of us would dart down to grab it and stow it in his britches. Didn’t none of us want to get stuck in the dark in that place. And there was dark ev’rywhere; black smoke coming off of the candles and crazy shadows getting cast over the uneven walls by ’em, running helter-skelter, yet dogging our feet ev’ry step of the way. Whenever I looked over my shoulder and saw one of those sliding along the cave beside me it made my stomach lurch a shade.
“I’ve just thought of something…,” says I, as I run. “…we didn’t shut the door to the cave. Whoever that is, they’ll know someone’s in here.”
“Long… long as we get to that there treasure first,” says Pap, gasping hard. “Then we can hide in a side passage till we know what’s what. If it’s Injun Joe, he’ll make for his loot and we can slip out behind him. Anyone else and the loot ain’t any of their business.”
He was mighty hopeful at times, Pap.
We run as far as the spirit said and come to the end of the tunnel. It forks, one way going left (more or less), t’other going right.
“Turn right,” says the hairball, without prompting.
Everybody turns.
“Hold up,” says Tom. He stops in front of the wall ’twixt them two new tunnels and rassles a hunk of red keel from his britches. Then he draws up a big arrow on the wall, rough and damp as it is, pointing to the left.
“Maybe that’ll wrongfoot whoever’s on our trail,” says he. “They’ll think we need to make marks so’s we don’t get lost.”
“Maybe,” says Jim. “If they leave that bloodhoun’ behin’!”
On we run, down the righthand passage.
Well, that was the picture for what seemed like an age, running this way and that, following the spirit whenever it said “turn left” or “go down the slope” or “second passage on the right” or whatnot. And, cold though it was, we got hot with the running and mighty out of breath – Pap in particular, who raddled his health long ago, with the whisky. And sometimes we’d slip and skin our shins on the rock or pick up some bruises elsewhere. Warn’t fun!
“Over the stream,” says the hairball, and over we go, each of us skipping over a little creek two foot wide crossing our path – right there underground – running out of one crack in the wall and disappearing back into another.
“Left,” comes the voice agin, more like a command than a direction. “Left again!”
Then we find ourselves entering a cavern, big one – could feel the size of it even ’fore our steps slow and we stand a moment, panting, looking ’bout us, ’cause of the sound, the echoiness of it all. You feel it as much as you hear it, you know? T’ain’t like being in one of the tunnels at all. I hold up one of the candle stubs I’ve swiped and Tom lights it for me; lights another for Jim.
“This it?” says Pap, leaning on the shovel and catching his breath, his eyes darting round. “Must be – don’t see no way out ’cept back the way we come.”
“Ask it if the treasure’s in here,” says Tom. “And to steer us straight.”
“You heard, spirit,” says I. “So imagine I asked that – even though I don’t care a straw ’bout it. What’s your answer?”
This was it: “See where the stream runs out of the far wall, high up, and drops into a pool. Its cascade forms a waterfall – go to it.”
“Thought I could hear running water,” says Tom, going ahead, his candle aloft. “Yes, there it is, by geeminy! T’ain’t much more’n a trickle, but it’s a stream all right. And look at that waterfall – petrified all to stone by the years. Thin-looking, though – ’most like lace.”
“Yes, yes,” says Pap, bustling up. “It’s a gaudy piece o’ stonework, all right – how’s that help us?”
Tom edges hisself round the pool the stream ran into – limped, more’n ran – off of that stony waterfall.
“Look,” says he. “There’s a gap behind it. It don’t touch the wall at all.”
Tom don’t lose no time in showing how: he flattens his back to the wall and sidles along till he’s behind that limestone ’fall. It’s so thin we can see his candle glowing behind it, like an orange stain moving along. “There’s an opening,” calls Tom. “Might be a squeeze for Jim, but rest of us should get through easy. This must be the way!”
“Is it?” says I.
“It is the way,” comes the spirit’s voice, lifting off of the hairball round my neck (and, Lord, it always made me shiver to hear it so
close). “Through the opening the tunnel descends, steep like stairs. The passage is narrow. Follow it. Follow it down into the earth, every turn. Down, into the living rock. Down, under the earth. Down, below the hill. Down and down.”
“Down, then!” says Pap with a spit. “A-ways by the sound of it!”
“Getting poetic, that spirit,” says Tom. “Ain’t it?”
We allowed it was – though none of us liked to think of that weight of world ’bove us by the time we got wherever we was going. Made my stomach do headstands!
Pap skips up and starts to squeeze in behind the ’fall.
“Do you want me to come out so you can go first, Mr Finn?” says Tom, backing up.
“No, that’s fine, son,” says Pap, pushing him ahead agin. “You stay forrard – you’ve a knack fer it.”
I went next, then waited for Jim.
“Lord,” says he, edging round the pool, eyeing the waterfall up and down. “I’se gonna need flat-ironin’ to get behin’ that!”
“You can do it, Jim,” says I, encouraging. “It’s only thin. You can bust it if need be.”
He mutters something I don’t catch, then squeezes in. There ain’t much room back there, it’s true; Tom and Pap has ’ready turned into the passage. And that’s narrow too, narrower’n I’d like – but least that means it’s brighter, the candlelight squeezed up so close.
So down we go.
It’s twisty all right, down there, underground. Narrow too, most of the way – wider’n one person, but not properly wide ’nuff for two.
“Where now?” comes Pap’s voice after we’ve been walking a while.
“Where now, spirit?” says I.
“When this passage divides, turn right,” says the spirit. “When it divides again, turn left. Then down.”
“Might’ve figured there’d be more ‘down’,” says Pap. “I’ve had a bellyful of down!”
“Hush up!” It was Jim; he said it sharp.
“Don’t shush me,” says Pap, stopping dead and turning. “A man can complain, can’t he?”
“Hush, hush,” says Jim again, urgent. “I didn’t mean that… Listen!”
We listen – and there it is plain, behind us in the cave somewheres: the baying of a bloodhound.
Getting louder.
“Oh, Lordy, they’se in the tunnels,” says Jim. “On our scent fo’ sho’.”
“Them?” says Pap. “Might be Injun Joe alone fer all you know– though that’s a sight worse fer some of us. Best we skip on now, I reckon!”
We don’t need to vote on that one; we heel it down that passage best we can – shadows and echoes jiggering all crazy round us as we go.
“Coming… coming to a cavern, Hucky,” says Tom to me, ’twixt breaths. “Can you hear the difference? Can you feel it?”
I can too. Sound of our footsteps was coming back at us from up ahead, deeper’n lower’n the sound’d been before. Can feel the air getting cooler too. In front of us, the black was blacker.
All at once, we’re out that passage and in the cavern. We spread out a little, holding up our candles to take a squint. It was big, with several other tunnels, wide ones and narrow, running off of it.
“This is it,” says Pap. “It is, I’ll lay, gaudy place like this.”
It was gaudy all right! Great pillars of stone stretched from floor to ceiling, thick at the top and bottom, but thin in the middle. There was other pillars too – half-made, some hanging down from the ceiling, thick as a man’s leg, couple of yards long, getting thinner the longer they dropped, ’fore coming to a point. There was others on the floor, matching ’em, seeming to grow up out of the ground. There was little drops of water running down the top ones and dripping onto the grounded ones.
“Stacktights and stagmights,” says Tom, goggling some – ’cause this sort of oddity has always been nuts to Tom. “Get built up by the grit in the water dripping down over slathers of years. See how they join up sometimes – build themselves into columns.”
“Why, it’s pretty all right,” says Jim. “Leas’ways it would be if it warn’t so gashly down here. But, Lord, what in the nation is that smell?”
“It’s ripe, all right,” says Pap – and anything could get past the whisky and tobacco stink of his own self has to be pretty bad, you’ll allow.
“Worser’n back of the slaughterhouse in August,” says I.
“It’s all over the floor,” says Tom, looking to his feet. “We’re standing in it!”
We all look likewise, holding our candles to see what it is. Then we wish we hadn’t.
“Like mud,” says Pap. “Only t’ain’t.” He was a sight less troubled than the rest of us, having boots.
“This ain’t no mud!” says Jim. “It’s sh…!”
“…it’s coming from up there,” says Tom. And we saw at once he was right, cause a drop more of this brownish ooze comes splashing down ’twixt our feet. Up we look, raising our candles high.
“Bats!” cries Jim. “Heaps of ’em! Lord, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s bats!”
We was none of us sold. All slimy and ratlike, they was bunched together, like grapes, or great black bees, swarming; they was clung to each other and the roof of the cave both, the stacktights too. But if we didn’t like them, they don’t like us none neither – our candlelight and our voices seem to stir ’em up. In seconds they’re wriggling all over the place, loosing hold and dropping off. Then, with a thousand little squeaks and pips, they launch theirselves into the air and go spinning round ’bove us. Well, it made me holler some, I’ll allow – but we all did, even Jim.
Then, like a river, off they go, pouring up out the tunnel, back the way we come – and Lord it was eerie, hearing them squeaks and twitters come shrieking back at us as echoes.
“Might as well’ve fired a cannon,” says Pap, indignant, like it was our fault. “They’ll hear ’em all right – whoever they are. Fetch ’em down this way, certain. And here we are trapped – leastways, if there’s another way out of this cave, I can’t see it. Ask that spirit, Huck. And where’s the loot?”
I ’membered what Tom’d said, so I ask only ’bout the treasure. You can bet I cared ’bout the way out.
Spirit answers like this: “Away over on the far side of this cavern, opposite where you now stand, is a passage. Beyond it a lake. Skirt the lake, follow the passage on the other side, descend the mound of clay, then look for the boulder bearing a cross drawn with candle smoke. ’Neath the cross lies the treasure you seek.”
“Dern!” says Pap.
We all have a good smile at each other, then we hear that bloodhound agin, its voice coming down the tunnels – far off still, but closing. We all start forward then, knowing it’s time to go.
“Tom,” says I, when we’re ’most halfway ’cross that cavern. “You know you said you reckoned it safe to burden this here hairball with questions long as you don’t care ’bout the answer?”
“Ye-es,” says Tom, his voice already cautious. “Reckon that’s so. What ’bout it? You haven’t started caring ’bout getting a share for yourself, have you?”
“No, Tom,” says I. “I hain’t. But… well… it occurs that I do care ’bout Jim getting a share so’s he can go get his wife and girl back, and that Pap can get a share so’s he’ll head off downriver drinking agin and leave me be for a time, and that you get some ’cause I know how bully the thought of treasure is to you. Reckon I’ve cared ’bout them things all along, since before we come inside the cave. Think that matters any?”
’Fore Tom can answer I hear something crack under Jim’s foot.
“What the…?” says he.
“What’s that?” says Pap, up ahead, stopping and turning back. “Shift yerself with that pick, boy. Loot don’t dig itself out the ground!”
“There’s something lying here in this filth,” says Jim. “Why, look – there’s truck all over the place. Didn’t see it before, it’s so covered in… it! Odd shapes too.”
Jim crouches
down and takes a-holt of something poking out the muck.
Tom and me start looking round our feet too.
“Come on, come on,” says Pap. “Whatever it is, it ain’t treasure!”
“That’s a watch,” says Tom pointing. “All tarnished from lying in this stuff… and that’s a revolver, ain’t it? Rusted ’most to powder.”
“Is that a boot?” says I. “Laying on its side.”
Jim picks at something in the muck, holds it dainty, his nose wrinkling, and pulls it out slow as he stands up. It’s long.
“This looks like a… legbone,” says he, peering hard into the candlelight. “An’ it’s covered in scratches. No, knife marks… an’ teeth marks.” Jim lets it slip from his fingers and it splashes back into the filth. “Oh, Lord!” Then he looks up, ’cause, like the rest of us, he’s heard the rustling, scraping, scratching, flapping, clicking sound high above.
“What’s that?” says Pap, peering into the gloom. “More dern bats?”
It did sound like the bats we’d heard before – only louder, deeper, bigger.
“Lord,” says Jim. “Looky – a whole big ugly clump of ’em!”
“No,” says Tom, ’most dropping his candle. “Just the one!”
And it was too – huge, black, bigger’n a man, unfurling a pair of wings the length of a wagon, claws like six-inch nails, teeth like a woodsaw. Hanging upside down it was, hanging from the cave roof, twisting itself so’s its ugly, snouty face was squinting at us. All of them horrors and – and a voice we knew.
“Come for my treasure, have you?” It’s Injun Joe – you know it!
Chapter 13: Teeth, blood ’n’ water
“Thought he was an eagle,” says I, whispering to Tom. “Flew off south.”
“So I was,” says the bat-Joe. “Think I only know the one way into these caves? Bat’s better for caves than an eagle – better hearing. Been listening to you for the past two mile.” He gives a laugh – I think it was a laugh – full of sharp clicks that hurt our ears.
“Then if he ain’t the bloodhoun’…?” says Jim.
Huck Page 25